Tallarn

[Ascanius]

I feel odd asking this question, because I like John French's other work a lot and I have already listened to 42 Horus Heresy audiobooks so far, including some on topics I didn't think I'd be interested in . . .

 

. . . but I really don't know if I should listen to Tallarn.

 

(If I don't, I'll read it, because it'll only take me an evening or two in any case.)

 

For those who have read it or listened to it, how much appeal do you think it would have for someone like me who is not really interested in depictions of armoured engagements? i.e. is there enough "character material", for want of a better word, to make it worthwhile?

 

I have much less tolerance for books with lengthy descriptions of battle than most, I think, but the audiobook format exacerbates it because I can't skim through those sections quickly the way I can with text.

 

For me, the appeal of the Horus Heresy series isn't "Imperial forces fighting each other," it's "the Imperium at war with itself." I'm more interested in reading about people under stress during conflict than about the details of the battles themselves.

 

"The Eagle's Talon" and "Iron Corpses", the Tallarn-related stories in The Eye of Terra, were fine, but I guess by comparison if much of Tallarn is more similar to "Ironfire", I'd rather read it quickly than listen to a 13-hour audiobook.

 

So . . . any advice?

[1ncarnadine]

I read the Tallarn stuff as its component novellas, so it's been a while and my memory is hazy. But I don't recall it being a story focused on the big armour engagements. There's some of that in there, but especially the second half (the Tallarn: Ironclad section) is more about why the heck Perturabo is there throwing troops into a meat grinder at all. It actually follows a bunch of characters trying to figure that out, instead of the larger conflict.

 

When it does get into the armour stuff (in the first Executioner half in particular), it's on a personal level rather than a macro level. It focuses on a single human tank crew and describes the miserable conditions of fighting on a world contaminated by the life-eater.

Edited December 5, 2017 by LetsYouDown

[Roomsky]

The books are brilliant to my mind, but I;ve heard a lot of complaints that too little is focused on the armored conflict, that is, those who actually came for the tank battle left disappointed. Should be right up your alley, both Novellas are more character driven I find.

[Phoebus]

Everything that follows comes with the obvious caveat: "In my humble opinion..."

 

The supporting stories (meaning, the novella Tallarn: Executioner and the stories "Talarn: Siren" and "Tallarn: Witness") are excellent. I recommend them to anyone, regardless of their tastes in fiction.

 

Tallarn: Ironclad, on the other hand, suffers from a lack of what made the shorter material strong: strong characters, a very good sense of tension, and the sense that you are there. Perturabo's objective remains nebulous even after the story ends, which left me rather disappointed. Finally, French tries to finish off his story with the one thing he said Tallarn was not about: the massive armored engagement that features so centrally in that planet's mythos. French is a wonderful writer, but the way he tackled this was ill-advised. Like Perturabo's objective, the battle - both on the planet's surface and in orbit - is too vague and undefined to be satisfying. "Fog of war" only goes so far, and certainly doesn't make up for the signature scene essentially amounting to undefined masses of armor pouring into a geographical feature conveniently big enough for everyone to slug it out into. What we ultimately get is the Battle of Kursk over a couple of pages, sans any action, tactics, strategy, drama, or the personalities to generate any of those things.

 

Bottom line, Ironclad is not a bad story by any means, but it's disappointing - and by no means French's best work. My recommendation? Go for the eBook version. Alternately, if you don't feel like committing to Ironclad, get the eBook versions of "Siren", "Witness", and Executioner, and get French's "Black Oculus", all of which will cost you $1 more than the eBook version of Book 45.

Edited December 6, 2017 by Phoebus

[DarkChaplain]

I'd definitely recommend Executioner and Siren. Ironclad fell pretty flat for me though.

 

While Executioner is a tanks-driving-around story, it is fantastic in how it portrays the dangers and their effects on the crew itself, how they deal with the confinement of their iron coffins and all that. It is very character driven, in my opinion.

 

Ironclad... less so. It has more characters all over the place (an assassin, operatives, a Son of Horus, an Iron Warriors dreadnought...), but it didn't really hit home with its narrative. It ended too early, for one. It works towards something and then abruptly ends just as we get there, which I guess was the point considering the overall Tallarn arc. But it wasn't half as satisfying a read as Executioner, which I'd even recommend to people who haven't read the Heresy series.

 

But overall? You won't actually see the "10 million tanks!" stuff. A lot of the large engagements are skimmed over in a more historical fashion, via interludes between the main chapters. Which is one more problem I had with Ironclad, because those interludes ended up being far more fascinating than what was going on in the novel itself.

[Phoebus]

Honestly, I thought everything involving the Assassin and Horus's emissary was far more interesting than the titular Ironclad or the armored engagements (especially the final showdown).

 

Personal thought: there was a fantastic novel to be written between the above characters, the Imperial Fist from "Siren", the Alpha Legion, and the Tallarn turncoat. I imagine a story that plays out as a race for Perturabo's McGuffin, full of suspense, plot-twists, and race-to-the-finish drama, with the giant armor battle playing out in the background. I would've loved such a novel. Unfortunately, as has too often been the case when stories are chopped down to allow for e-shorts, audio shorts, and so on, the sum is not as strong as the individual parts... and the individual parts can suffer from being divided.

[Ascanius]

Sounds like it's not going to be a novel-length "Ironfire", which is good news!

 

(I thought "Ironfire" was pretty well-written and had its charms, but I just couldn't care less about the process of Krendl testing his stratagem.)

[Warpmiss]

I agree with Phoebus.

 

I wanted to read Tallarn because of the Iron Warriors but the IWs characters we get are a bit disappointing. Basically every other character seems more interesting but since it's a bunch of short stories and novellas put together there's sadly not much that can be explored. The audiobook is a pass for me.

[JH79]

None of the Tallarn material is focused mainly on armour battle, it's all character work first, engagements second. Executioner is the highest quality piece from the entire collection, it's horrifyingly graphic at times, but it's all about the people caught up in the fighting and surprisingly engaging throughout.

 

Ironclad was less enjoyable than Executioner but the Imperial Assassins storyline was very satisfying! In the end though the novel tried to do / cover too much. Maybe the brief to John from BL changed but i always thought it should of mirrored Gav Thorpe's Raven Guard release format, 3 novellas and accompanying shorts. Instead we got 1 novella, 1 small novel and lots of shorts. Them's the breaks though.

 

If audio is your thing i would highly suggest that you pick up the original Audio Drama versions of Eagles Talon and Iron Corpses as they were meant to be heard! The single voice actor narration really doesn't do them justice as seen in the Eye of Terra collection especially for Eagles Talon, the comparison is night and day!

[Tymell]

I'm in much the same boat as some others here have said. Also, mhacdebhandia, totally with you on wanting to read about the Imperium at war with itself. That's exactly the aspect that's interested me most in this series since it began :)

 

Anyway, if your concern is this being tank-battle-focused, I'd say don't worry. There isn't actually that much of it, especially considering how much this conflict is known for that, and when it does go that way it's often with focus on characters rather than just battle logistics.

 

That said, in terms of quality I do feel it's a mixed bag. Executioner was fantastic, Siren was solid, Witness was fine for what it was (a micro-short epilogue of sorts), Ironclad unfortunately dropped the ball somewhat IMO. The component parts that make it up are decent, there are certainly characters I like in it, but the way it was all put together didn't feel satisfying. It felt a bit too vague and unfocused for me, like it didn't really amount to much.

 

So yeah, I don't think it's a bad collection on the whole, and the focus is certainly not on the tanks and their war, but it does sag towards the end unfortunately.